HH3 constantly dropping broadband - Weird BT Speedtest Results

It's the common problem, the HH3 is constantly dropping the connection to my Infinity broadband.I'm hoping the mods can help me with this from here as I refuse to call India- I resent when a company puts call centres abroad to increase their profit margins; the quality of service to us (the customers) is ALWAYS sacrificed. Anyway's, I'll try to keep this brief...

The DSL light remains steady on the modem at all times yet the HH3 loses connection and takes a couple of minutes to pick it back up again. At best this "only" happens once every couple of hours, however most of the time this is happening every 20 to 30 minutes. I can't work from home, I can't watch anything online and I can't play any games online, it's just too unreliable. The first few weeks after installation everything was great, but it's being getting gradually worse everyday to the point where I now wish I still had my 4mb "always on" connection rather than this 40mb connection which is constantly dropping.

Replacing the router with a decent model seems to be a reliable solution to this problem (for most people anyway) and I'd rather do this than go through what so many others seem to have been through with numerous visits from clueless engineers and replacement HomeHubs with no improvements etc etc however I'm also a bit displeased with the fact I might have to spend more of my own money in order to get any kind of decent service from my new BT Infinity connection.

I've tried the following:

Resetting the Homehub, resetting the modem, rebooting other devices on the network

Moving any potential sources of interference away from the router

I had a wireless phone which I never used so I've unplugged all of that

Quiet line test on both the normal socket and the test socket, both completely silent

Ran a fault test on the phone line

Ran a BT speed test

The BT speed test came out as follows:

The weird thing is that I haven't noticed any problems with speed, when the broadband is up I'm always getting around 36mb down and 8mb up which is great- the problem is that it's constantly disconnecting.

So there's a problem somewhere, if I'm getting 36mb from speedtest.net but 1mb from BT speedtest right? Any ideas/advice or should I just get rid of the HH3 and get a decent router?

I'll contact a mod and post any progress here, I know I'm not the only one having this problem...

Re: HH3 constantly dropping broadband - Weird BT Speedtest Results

FYI I have read on another forum post that there is a problem with the BT speedtest which is causing some tests to show 1mb down and 7-8mb up so might be worth ignoring the results which I have posted in the above message.

Anyway, as I said, the problem is not the speed but the fact it's CONSTANTLY DISCONNECTING!]

Re: HH3 constantly dropping broadband - Weird BT Speedtest Results

I have virtually the same problem. BT replaced my modem for the third time about 2 months ago and at first all was well. But gradually the connection has gotten worse and worse and like you, it's not a problem with speed. It's particularly bad when trying to watch catch-up TV on say BBC iplayer. The connection simply gets interrupted. Lately even commonly used websites like Google take forever to load. And I know it's a BT Infinity problem because over the weekend I went to visit a friend in a completely different part of the country who had plain old BT Broadband and it worked like a charm without a hitch. And that was with a wireless connection while here at my home I normally use an ethernet cable connection.

And like you I hate to call India because it is always soooo time consuming .....I don't really know what to do except I guess call India again and get yet another engineer out who will probably install another modem . The last two visits the engineer told me that BT had a general problem with the modems used for Infinity....they were made in China and there were some bad batches.

Quite frustrating when you're supposed to have the top broadband in the country!

Re: HH3 constantly dropping broadband - Weird BT Speedtest Results

Thanks for your input Bart. Yours is exactly the kind of situation I want to avoid; repeated engineer visits, replacement routers and only temporary improvements before the connection goes back to being crappy again. Unfortunately it seems that lots of people are going through this which is why I thought I'd try to get the mods opinion on this before I start the inevitable rigmarole of calling India and everything else that will follow. I requested mod support the same day of my original post so hopefully I'll get a response from a mod today or the start of next week, if you keep an eye on this post maybe you'll see something that'll help you too.

I moved from Be because their fibre optic isn't going to be available for another year or 2 and I didn't want to wait, now I'm wishing I did wait. I should have expected substandard hardware and substandard service from BT because those were the reasons I moved away from BT in the first place all those years ago! (I was with Be for about 5 years, and I must say they were superb).

BT should send us decent third-party (netgear, linksys, d-link, anything!) routers and be done with it.

I certainly won't be recommending BT Infinity to anyone (not anyone I like anyway!).

Re: HH3 constantly dropping broadband - Weird BT Speedtest Results

Just thought I'd do a quick update here of my ongoing problems with BT Infinity

After contacting a mod he kindly agreed to send out a replacement HomeHub which I received last week. It's been in for a week now and the problem remaining, and in fact seems to be worse than ever. Hub is dropping connection to broadband every 30 mins during evenings and weekends (the time when we use it the most) and today I have been working from home today and it has been dropping every 10-20 minutes without fail since 8am this morning. It's completely useless and I'm having to use a 3G dongle in order to do my work from home.

I've asked the mod to report the fault to BT Wholesale which is what he suggested if the replacement hub didn't solve the problem. If the issue isn't resolved in the next few weeks I have no choice but to cancel the contract. So far transferring over to BT Infinity has been the worst technological decision I have made!

At the moment no one else seems to be providing fibre optic in my area so it looks like I'm looking at going back to a "normal" broadband line if BT Infinity doesn't improve. BE Broadband are claiming I'll get 16mb in my area, which will be fine if it's on all the time.

Re: HH3 constantly dropping broadband - Weird BT Speedtest Results

I'd love to be able to "ride out" the speed, but in fact the speed is not the issue. I'm getting 35-38mb down and 7-8mb up when I'm actually connected, but the connection is dropping every 10-20 minutes. This issue cannot be "ridden out", my broadband at home is almost completely useless since I can't stream anything online, play games online or work from home. I'd much rather have rubbish speeds but be connected all the time than have 3000Gb connection thats constantly down.

Re: HH3 constantly dropping broadband - Weird BT Speedtest Results

I'm pleased to say that this has now been resolved. A mod kindly arranged an engineer visit at very late notice and the engineer who came was very helpful and seemed very thorough. He performed some tests at my home and apparently everything seemed ok. He went to the Exchange only to have to return to my home because something didn't seem right and he needed to switch to another socket. It was then that it was noted that occasionally the HH3 would completely reboot itself (perhaps once in every 10 times that it dropped the broadband connection). He swapped the router over with a spare HH3 that he had with him and then went back to the Exchange.

Anyway, I don't know whether the new (my third) HH3 solved the problem or whether it was something else that was fixed on the cabinet or the exchange but we have now had a constant connection to broadband for nearly a week now so I'm glad that I didn't jump the gun too early and spent my own money on a new (different) router. Hopefully we will now enjoy a constantly connection for the rest of our contract.